“Yes, Jack, it must be so.” No cloud had ever darkened Kenneth Landor’s pleasure-loving, pleasure-giving life.
“Then she told me that she wasn’t brave really. That many a night she cried herself to sleep because she was heart-broken about her father and discouraged about their work and tired. I think she just told me that so I wouldn’t feel as if I were a coward because I cried too. I’d stopped by that time, I can tell you! And then she said she wanted me to help her and her sister be bright and jolly by being bright and jolly, too. That made me laugh—to think I could help them! We both laughed and I felt better. After that she talked a long time about trouble and how it came to some people very young and how it was a sort of test—did you ever think of that, Mr. Landor?” gazing earnestly into the man’s face.
“No, Jack, there are many things I have never thought of!”
“You would if you knew them, you couldn’t help it. She wasn’t a bit preachy—I hate that—but she said the way we took things showed the kind of characters we had and when we got discouraged we must just remember we were soldiers—Christ’s soldiers—that’s what she said.” The boy’s voice sank to a whisper. “And that no soldier amounted to shucks till he was knocked about and disciplined and taught to obey his superiors.”
“That is the truth, my boy.” In his heart Landor was marveling at what he heard.
“And do you know what, Mr. Landor? I’m going to march in the ranks too—a double-quick step to try to catch up with them and if ever I do catch up and can march alongside of them, won’t I be proud, just!” Julie’s little sermon had sunk deep into his receptive mind and kindled his imagination to deeds of valor like some knight of old. He leaned back on his cushions exhausted by this unusual talk, his frail body in pitiful contrast to the strength of the spirit that had awakened within him and glowed in his face with a transfiguring light.
Landor came over to his chair and took his hand in a grip that hurt. “I am going to enter the ranks too, old fellow,” said he, carrying out the illusion partly to please the boy’s fancy and partly because he had never before been so in earnest in his life.
“You!” said the boy, to whom Landor was a hero, “you don’t have to fight—why you can kill buffaloes and Indians and everything!”
Landor smiled. “Perhaps I have more dangerous foes nearer at hand, Jack. Who knows? Well, I must be going. Shall I lift you onto the couch first?”
Jack always enjoyed the feeling of Landor’s strong arms about him and gave the man a grateful look as he was laid gently down. The couch was in reality Jack’s bed and the change to the reclining chair had been brought about by Landor, who sent the chair to him in the early days of their acquaintance, but laughingly denied any previous knowledge of it when Jack endeavored to thank him.